


Better off alone

by smaragdbird



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Friendship, Jyn and Bodhi are good friends, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Outsider, Pining, Robot/Human Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27095902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/pseuds/smaragdbird
Summary: Ever since their last mission, Cassian and K-2SO have gone their separate ways, which puzzles Bodhi.Since it's pretty obvious that it makes them both miserable, he resolves to help his friends.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/K-2SO
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Better off alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nununununu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/gifts).



“Where’s Kay?” Bodhi asked when Cassian walked into the shuttle alone. As soon as he said the name, Cassian’s face darkened.

“He has a different mission.”

“What kind of mission?” Bodhi asked. “He didn’t say anything earlier.”

“That’s none of your business”, Cassian snapped.

Jyn raised her eyebrows. “Someone got up on the wrong foot this morning.”

“Where are Baze and Chirrut?”

“Chirrut’s training Luke”, Bodhi replied to Cassian’s question.

“And Baze?”

Jyn frowned. “Did you hit your head? Baze doesn’t go without Chirrut. You only get both together. Kind of like you and target practice.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Cassian snapped. “Let’s go.”

Behind Cassian’s back, Jyn pulled a face at Bodhi who only shrugged. He didn’t know Cassian well enough yet to guess what had him in such a foul mood this morning.

/

They could’ve used K-2SO on the mission but Jyn was a good enough slicer that they had been successful without him. Still, something about this didn’t sit right with Bodhi. He had never seen Cassian this ill-tempered or snappish and he couldn’t shake the feeling that it had to do with K-2SO.

“Hey, Tonc, have you seen K-2SO lately?” Bodhi asked when he ran into Tonc once they had returned to base. Their current hide-out was an old Clone Wars-era base on Jabiim, a temporary solution because Jabiim’s acidic rain made permanent settlements nearly impossible.

“Yeah sure he’s inside, analysing data for Draven I think.”

Bodhi frowned. “He is not on a mission?”

“I don’t think he left since he and Cassian came back from Halthor. I was surprised he didn’t go with you.”

“Cassian said he had a different mission.”

“That’s odd. Usually you have to pry these two apart with a crowbar.” That had been Bodhi’s impression too. There was a great deal of trust between them, they were on more equal footing with each other than any other droid-organic pair Bodhi had ever met, even within the Rebellion, starting with K-2SO not calling Cassian or anyone else “master”. Or that Cassian had risked his life and their mission to retrieve K-2SO from Scarif. 

“Did you hear anything about the Halthor mission?” Bodhi asked. He only knew it had gone badly but not any details.

Tonc shook his head. “If K-2SO hasn’t told you, Cassian certainly hasn’t told me either. He doesn’t do gossip.”

“Thanks anyway”, Bodhi replied. He spied K-2SO in the command centre but he seemed busy so Bodhi decided to leave this matter for another day. Maybe it would resolve on its own.

/

For their next mission, a small raid on an Imperial storage facility, Chirrut and Baze joined them again. Luke was training with the other X-Wing pilots but K-2SO was still nowhere to be seen.

“Aren’t we missing someone?” Baze asked when Cassian told them to prepare for take-off. 

“No”, Cassian replied.

“Let me guess, K-2SO has a different mission?” Jyn crossed her arms over her chest and couldn’t have sounded more disbelieving if she had tried.

“Do you have a problem?”

“We do if you keep lying to us”, Jyn was staring Cassian in the eyes. “K-2SO doesn’t have a different mission. He didn’t have one last time either. Bodhi said he didn’t even leave base.”

Bodhi wished she hadn’t mentioned his name. But he had still hope that she would leave his comments about Cassian being a worse co-pilot than Kay out at least.

“Kay has been assisting Draven”, Cassian replied. Their staring contest, sizing each other up reminded Bodhi a lot about their confrontation on Eadu. The atmosphere in the shuttle was nearly as chilly too. He looked from Jyn to Baze, Chirrut and finally Bodhi. “Anyone else?”

“When is he coming back?” Bodhi asked and could’ve bit his own tongue for it.

A complicated look passed Cassian’s face that told Bodhi that there was more to the story than just General Draven requesting K-2SO’s assistance. “I don’t know.”

/

K-2SO was present for the briefing with Draven but he neither looked at nor addressed Cassian. He talked with Bodhi and had even a few words to spare for Jyn, Baze and Chirrut but Cassian might as well not have existed.

Not that Cassian was any better. It was as if they had both agreed to pretend that the other didn’t exist. Even Draven found it unnerving going by the looks he kept giving both.

As they left Chirrut caught Cassian’s arm. “You should not let your argument fester. The longer the silence lasts the harder it will be to raise your voice.”

Cassian yanked his arm out his grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jyn threw Bodhi a look and he nodded. They had talked about this earlier when Cassian had been out of earshot. He’d linger and ask K-2SO what was wrong because obviously something was wrong.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait for long. Draven glanced from him to K-2SO and then promptly kicked both of them out of the command centre. 

“How are you?” Bodhi asked as they started to walk around base. There were puddles of acidic water on the floor where the rain had eaten through the seals between units. Bodhi was careful to step around them but K-2SO hardly seemed bother.

“Bored.”

“I thought strategic analysis was one of your strength”, Bodhi replied, wondering how he could steer the topic towards Cassian and his recent strange behaviour.

“I’m also good at heavy lifting but that doesn’t mean I find it exciting”, K-2SO said. 

“Well, we could’ve used you on the last mission. Too bad you were busy.” Bodhi hoped that K-2SO would take the opportunity to rant instead of confirming Cassian’s lie, because otherwise he was straight out of ideas on how to get to the bottom of this issue without asking plainly.

K-2SO’s photoreceptors swivelled towards him. “Who told you I was busy?”

“Cassian.”

K-2SO’s fans audibly picked up speed as if there was a great amount of processing power going into his thoughts. 

“I guess you’re not?” Bodhi asked carefully. From what he had seen on Scarif and from what Jyn had told him, Cassian and K-2SO were incredibly loyal towards each other. Bodhi sticking his nose in could easily be taken the wrong way.

K-2SO’s fans whirred even louder and his movements seemed stiffer somehow, as if he was deep in thoughts or perhaps angry.

“Kay…did something happen between you and Cassian on Halthor?” Bodhi asked because dammit all, he wasn’t a spy, he was just trying to help his friends.

“You should ask Cassian that”, K-2SO replied without looking at him.

“I’m pretty sure Cassian would shoot me if I tried”, Bodhi said. “He’s been in a pretty bad mood lately.”

The silence lasted so long that Bodhi had accepted K-2SO wasn’t going to tell him anything when he did suddenly say, “Cassian said it’d be better if we’re not going on missions together anymore.”

“But why?” Up until now Bodhi had thought that Cassian’s bad mood had been due to being separated from K-2SO by some outside force, Draven perhaps or even General Cracken, but not that he had done it himself.

“He didn’t say. He didn’t speak to me at all since we came back from Halthor so I decided not to speak to him either.”

“What happened on Halthor?” Bodhi asked because that seemed to be the crux of the matter. 

K-2SO’s hesitation told Bodhi that it was. 

“Kay, you’re my friend. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“He killed a patrol”, K-2SO said after another long silence. “They got suspicious why an admiral’s assistant would be accompanied by a Kx droid. Cassian killed them and we left before we could finish our mission.”

“Cassian has killed people before, hasn’t he?” It was a rhetorical question. Bodhi had seen Cassian kill people himself. 

“He has and he didn’t always like it but it never changed anything between us.” K-2SO’s tone was so full of frustration underlined with sadness that Bodhi reached out and rubbed his arm.

“Do you want me to talk to him?” Bodhi asked. Cassian’s bad mood did scare him but K-2SO was his friend and Bodhi had done plenty of things that had scared him for his friends before. Like defecting from the Empire.

“Cassian doesn’t talk.” K-2SO’s voice left no doubt how ridiculous he found that notion. “You have a 3.6% higher chance of literally drawing blood from a stone.”

Bodhi had to admit that he had a point. “I have an idea. How do you feel about involving Jyn?”

“Do we have to?”

“Do you want Cassian to talk to you again?”

K-2SO let out a long-suffering sigh. “Fine.”

/

Jyn accused Bodhi of reading too many trashy romance-holos, but in the end agreed to his plan if only to get Cassian out of his funk. It probably also counted as misuse of Alliance property but this was hardly the first time Bodhi had ‘liberated’ this particular shuttle and this time he had even gotten approval beforehand.

By lying to Draven and Cassian about taking the shuttle for a test flight after some made-up engine troubles.

“You’re getting good at this”, Jyn whispered and elbowed him in the side to show her approval.

Bodhi would’ve rather confined his subterfuge skills to the sabacc table, but he had also learned early on that life wasn’t fair. 

“Are you sure the engine was giving you troubles?” Cassian asked from the co-pilot seat, frowning at the console.

“Yep.”

Cassian glanced over his shoulder at Jyn. “What are you doing here?”

“I just want to get off this mudball for a bit”, she replied, unfazed by his tone.

Bodhi really hoped this would work. Cassian’s perpetual bad mood was beginning to influence him as well. 

Take-off went smoothly, compared to the ion-storms on Eadu Jabiim’s lashings of acidic rain were child’s play. Once they had cleared the atmosphere and were in outer space, Bodhi asked Cassian if he could go down and check the stabilisators in the freight room.

Cassian looked at Jyn.

“Do I look like a pilot to you?” She replied, raising her hands.

“Whatever”, Cassian muttered and got up. 

Jyn had chosen her seat close to the ladder. As soon as they heard Cassian’s “What – “when he saw K-2SO down there, she closed the hatch and sealed it tight.

“Sorry guys”, she said through the coms. “But we’re all sick of your shit. Talk it out or shoot each other, we don’t care. Just get it over with.”

“Jyn! Jyn, get us the fuck out of here”, they’ve heard Cassian yell while he knocked against the hatch. “Bodhi! Get her to open the door!”

“Sorry Cassian, but she’s right”, Bodhi replied through the coms. “You need to talk to Kay. You know you do. Besides this was my idea, you can’t blame them.”

In response there was more knocking and yelling. However, Jyn and Bodhi had come prepared with enough holos and snacks to las them the day. The pilot’s compartment could be sealed off from the rest of the ship and in case of a genuine emergency, K-2SO had his own comlink.

/

“They’re not going to open that hatch”, K-2SO pointed out when Cassian didn’t stop hammering against it or stopped yelling.

“Well sooner or later they’ll have to”, Cassian muttered without looking at Kay. This had been exactly the kind of situation he had been trying to avoid.

“Actually there are ration packs, a blanket and an emergency latrine down here”, K-2SO replied. 

Cassian sighed and briefly rested his forehead against the ladder. So maybe he wasn’t going to get out of this as soon as he had hoped. “Were you in on this?”

“Yes.” 

Of course he had been. Cassian knew he had brought this onto himself. He should’ve given Kay a proper reason instead of just informing him of his decision. He should’ve known Kay wouldn’t take that well. “Well?”

“What?” 

“Bodhi said you wanted to talk. So talk.”

“Bodhi said you should talk to me”, K-2SO replied. “I’ve analysed the mission on Halthor. We had to abort it after you shot the patrol, there was no chance of concluding it successfully.”

Cassian laughed and it sounded bitter even to his own ears. “But did I have to shoot that patrol? Tell me.” He finally turned to face Kay and all of a sudden it felt as if this shuttle was not big enough for both of them. “Tell me the odds that they would’ve discovered us.”

“Those odds were only at 16.8%”, K-2SO answered. It was even lower than Cassian had suspected. 

“How do you explain it then, what I did?”

“You’re organic”, K-2SO said in a voice that suggested this was all the explanation needed.

Cassian rubbed a hand over his face. He wished it had been that easy. 

“What does this have to do with anything?” K-2SO asked. “We were together on Halthor the entire time. I know all the variables, but I still cannot figure out what triggered your decision.” He sounded frustrated.

“What if I told you, I killed them to protect you? Would that help?” Perhaps if he showed Kay the worst of it, they could leave this behind. He’d understand why Cassian had made this choice.

“No.” Kay’s photoreceptors swivelled quickly from one side to the other. It was always a tell-tale sign that he was performing some rapid mental processing. “It’s not the first time you killed someone to protect me.”

“I was out of line this time. They didn’t have to die. But when they touched you, I panicked. I thought I was going to lose you again.” Even the memory of it was bad enough. Cassian could taste his fear like bile on his tongue.

“You didn’t lose me.”

“Yes, I did on Scarif. If you hadn’t closed the archive doors, I would’ve done something stupid. I was running towards them when you told us to climb.”

“You kept shouting my name. I remember that.”

“On Halthor I realised that I cannot do that again, I can’t lose you.”

“You’ve lost friends before.”

“Calling us friends is an insult to what you mean to me, Kay.” Cassian hadn’t really meant to say it, but he felt raw, peeled open and it had slipped out.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to. It’s an organic thing I suppose. But it’s not going to go away so it’s better if we go our separate ways.” There it was, the whole ugly truth of it. In his darkest moments Cassian had wondered if there was something wrong with him. There had to be. Maybe it had been his parents’ early and violent death. Maybe was the result of spending his entire life fighting one war or another. A normal person...a normal person wouldn’t feel like this

“No, I don’t understand why you would break us up over that. I have never been professional when it came to you. I always put you first. On Scarif I had 89 possible ways of escaping but I didn’t use a single one because going by the variables I had available it was impossible you would survive. And I didn’t want to survive without you.” K-2SO had gotten up and was stalking across the shuttle towards Cassian. 

Cassian had the words, “It’s different. You’re a droid.” Already on his tongue but hesitated with saying them out loud. Because they were both true and a lie at the same time. 

“If we’re both emotionally compromised, we can’t do our job, Kay.” I didn’t want to survive without you either. The words were stuck in Cassian’s throat. That was why he had dragged K-2SO’s body from the tower to the shuttle despite the protests from the others. Cassian didn’t know when K-2SO had become his entire world, but it was too late to change it now.

“You will have to”, Kay replied, standing right in front of him now. “I refuse to work with anyone but you or to be left behind to run data analysis again. Do you have any idea how boring that is?”

“What if I make a mistake?” Cassian wouldn’t let K-2SO defuse the situation with humour. He had to make him see how serious this was and why Cassian had to make them go their separate ways.

“Like on Jobar? Or Mallastair? Or Lintong? You’re not infallible, Cassian.”

As if he needed any reminder of that.

“What if I make a mistake like on Jenoport? Or on Scarif? I compromised the entire mission because of my feelings. What if next time, I don’t get away with it?”

K-2SO put his head back and sighed. “What if next time you fall down a maintenance shaft because you slip and I’m not there to catch you in time? Stop punishing yourself for things that haven’t happen yet and may never happen at all. Do you think the other intelligence operatives aren’t compromised by something?”

Cassian wished Kay would stop making sense when he was trying to do the right thing. “It’s not the same.”

“It’s exactly the same. You’re not special, Cassian.” Kay had raised his voice over the last few words and Cassian felt he needed to match that.

“I’ve just told you I’m in love with you, why doesn’t that scare you?” Cassian yelled.

“Because I’m in love with you, too, so stop being a coward”, K-2SO yelled back.

Cassian opened his mouth to continue arguing when Kay’s words hit him. “You’re what?”

“I’m in love with you, too. It was about time you realised that you love me. I had high hopes for the Scarif-aftermath, 68% in fact, but it seems you needed an extra push. Typical.”

“You knew I’m in love with you?” Cassian asked, some sort of giddy disbelief spreading through his chest. 

“I’ve realised after Jenoport, when you refused to wipe me even though I offered but we might have been in love earlier than that.” Kay said it as if it was the most normal thing in the world. 

Jenoport had been a disaster and Cassian was still not sure how he had made it through, except that he did now. “I suppose you’re right.”

“I’m always right”, K-2SO replied primly.

“Anaxes.”

“I’m right 99.98% of the time.”

Cassian laughed softly and reached out to take Kay’s hand. “Is that okay?”

“I like it.” Kay’s long fingers curled around his. With his free hand, K-2SO reached up and cradled Cassian’s face in his palm. “How about this?”

“I like it”, Cassian echoed, pushing his face into Kay’s palm.

/

After finishing their third holo, Jyn stretched and asked around a yawn, “Should we check up on them?”

Bodhi, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, nodded through his own yawn. “Probably.”

When Jyn wanted to get up to open the hatch, he stopped her. “There are cameras down there.”

He had disabled them for K-2SO’s and Cassian’s privacy but now he activated the one that showed most of the freight room from his holo-pad. The quality wasn’t great but it was enough to make out K-2SO sitting on the floor with Cassian curled up against his sider under a blanket. Kay’s arm was thrown over Cassian’s shoulders and holding him close.

“Do you think they made up?” Jyn asked with a grin. 

“I think so”, Bodhi replied and disabled the feed but not before taking a screenshot. 

It would make a nice anniversary present next year.


End file.
